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Argo and the Gods in Apollonius Rhodius
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
In 1925 Miss J. R. Bacon wrote concerning Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica: ‘If the centre of the story is sought, that feature which above all others is indispensable, it must be found in the Argo. It is Argo—sea-adventure—that differentiates the Argonautica on the one hand from pure fairy-tale, the six soldiers of fortune and the like, and on the other from the stories of great human appeal like the Homeric poems. The Odyssey, as its name implies, is the story of a man: the Argonautica too is well named—it is the story of a ship and of a voyage.’ It was no doubt because he shared such feelings that Nathaniel Hawthorne in his Tanglewood Tales (1853) made so much of the ‘personality’ of the ship, or, more exactly, of its figurehead, ‘the daughter of the Speaking Oak of Dodona’, which in his version of the story of the Golden Fleece so often advises Jason in his difficulties.
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References
page 117 note 1 The Voyage of the Argonauts (London, 1925), 91.Google Scholar
page 117 note 2 Cf. Aesch. Prom. Vinct. 832Google Scholar, αἱ προσήγοροι δρύες, and Soph. Trach. 1168Google Scholar, πολυγλώσσου δρυός.
page 117 note 3 Cf. Aesch. fr. 20Google Scholar (N2), π⋯ δ᾽ ⋯στ⋯ν Ἀργο⋯ς ἱρ⋯ν αὔδασον ξύλον;
page 118 note 1 ἔτι κλείουσιν codd.
page 119 note 1 Cf. Lawall, G., YCS xix (1966), 123.Google Scholar
page 119 note 2 Cf. Flaccus, Valerius, Argonautica i. 627 ff.Google Scholar
page 119 note 3 NH xiii. 119.Google Scholar (For the connection between Dodona and ship-building in general, cf. Nicol, D. M., G & R v [1958], 133.)Google Scholar
page 119 note 4 D.L. i. 3.
page 120 note 1 Studies in Book i of the Argonautica (Diss. Columbia Univ., N.Y., 1967), 17 (f.n.).Google Scholar
page 120 note 2 But cf. Sec. II. 3.
page 120 note 3 ii. 328 ff., where one feels that Apollonius has given to Phineus words which a poet with different interests would have given to Argo herself.
page 120 note 4 Except in Book iii, which is a special case: see Sec. III below.
page 121 note 1 Previous references (see Sec. I) to Athene's participation in the building of the ship were only made in passing and without full description.
page 121 note 2 There are other awkwardnesses also: cf. Klein, L., Philologus lxxxvi (1931), 215 ff.Google Scholar
page 121 note 3 We need not here discuss the resemblance between the Πλάγκται and the Συμπληγάδες, which is irrelevant for our purposes.
page 123 note 1 Pace L.S.J.—unless we are to suppose that she was pulled stern first, which seems undignified and unlikely.
page 124 note 1 Perhaps due to the lyrical quality which Apollonius seeks to impart to the love-story of Jason and Medea. This seems more likely than the Scholiast's explanation that Erato, as the Muse of dancing, is appropriate to a γάμος-narrative.
page 124 note 2 There was in fact a statue by Polyclitus of boys playing with knuckle-bones; cf. Pliny, , NH xxxiv. 55.Google Scholar
page 124 note 3 Cf. Phinney, E., CJ lxii (1967), 145–9.Google Scholar
page 124 note 4 Cf. Couat, A., La Poesie Alexandrine (Paris, 1882), 306.Google Scholar
page 125 note 1 iv. 753–70, where Hera gives instructions to Iris, forms an unimportant exception, being only a formal prelude to action by sea-nymphs in the world of men.
page 125 note 2 Cf. also the case of Phineus noticed on p. 120, n. 3.
page 126 note 1 Od. xii. 70Google Scholar, Ἀργὼ π⋯σι μέλουσα.
2 Od. iv. 230; x. 213.Google Scholar
3 The episode of the ‘talking crow’ at iii. 927 ff. is not in point here; cf. the editions of Mooney and Vian ad loc.